Why the Big Horn Basin loves the Fourth

The best thing that ever happened to the Fourth of July is that our Founding Fathers didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence in January.

All the traditions we cherish today, backyard barbecues, parades, fireworks, rodeos, family reunions, and hot dogs, just wouldn’t have the same magic in the middle of winter. Summer provides the perfect backdrop for celebrating America’s birthday, and there may be no better place in America to celebrate our nation’s birthday than Wyoming and the Big Horn Basin.

Americans celebrate their national holiday differently than most nations. Many countries celebrate the day their independence was secured. Americans celebrate the day they announced it to the world. That alone is a remarkable display of confidence and boldness that we continue to honor 250 years later.

From the very beginning, Americans marked the occasion with enthusiasm. As news of the Declaration of Independence spread across the colonies in the summer of 1776, communities celebrated with bells, bonfires, speeches, and public gatherings. By July 4, 1777, the Revolutionary War was raging, and victory was far from certain. Nevertheless, citizens gathered in Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, and towns across the new nation for parades, fireworks, and patriotic celebrations.

They were not celebrating a war that had been won. They were celebrating an idea they believed was worth fighting for.

As the nation moved westward, Independence Day traveled with it.

Even on the edge of the wilderness, Americans found a way to celebrate their independence. On July 4, 1804, Lewis and Clark paused their expedition long enough to name a stream in present-day Kansas “Independence Creek.” According to William Clark’s journal, the men were given extra whiskey to “drink to the Independence of the United States,” after which they “fired the swivel (gun), danced and sang all the evening.” More than two centuries later, it remains one of the most distinctly American Fourth of July celebrations ever recorded.

In Wyoming, the first known Fourth of July celebration occurred in 1830 when fur trader William Sublette and a party of mountain men stopped along the Sweetwater River. They named a massive granite landmark Independence Rock and recorded that they had celebrated the nation’s birthday “in due style.”

Thousands of emigrants heading west later followed that tradition. Families traveling the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails often timed their journeys to reach Independence Rock around July 4. There, in the middle of an untamed wilderness, they paused to celebrate the freedoms that had carried them west.

It was a tradition Buffalo Bill Cody understood well.

In 1882, while visiting his hometown of North Platte, Nebraska, Cody discovered that local leaders had failed to organize a Fourth of July celebration. According to historian Don Russell, Buffalo Bill declared that such an act was simply unpatriotic.

The townspeople promptly made him chairman of the celebration committee.

That decision would change how America embraced its midsummer celebrations, especially in the West.

Cody organized what became known as the “Old Glory Blow Out,” a patriotic extravaganza featuring riding contests, roping competitions, horse races, sharpshooting demonstrations, and reenactments of frontier life. Thousands attended. Cowboys arrived from hundreds of miles away. What began as a Fourth of July celebration quickly evolved into something much bigger.

The following year, Buffalo Bill launched Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, transforming the ideas he had tested during that Fourth of July celebration into a spectacle that would captivate audiences around the world.

In many ways, the way we celebrate the Fourth of July here in Wyoming, with rodeos, horse races, parades, and cattle shows, can trace part of its lineage back to that patriotic gathering in North Platte. Although the towns in the Big Horn Basin were more than a decade away from being founded, the event established a formula that would later define small-town Wyoming’s legacy of patriotism, horsemanship, competition, and celebration of the American West.

Even before Buffalo Bill brought his over-the-top showmanship to Cody, other cities in the Big Horn Basin were already having grand Fourth of July celebrations. On July 4, 1895, Thermopolis held a 100-gun sunrise salute, a public reading of the entire Declaration of Independence, and foot races for men and women. (Men ran 75 yards and women 30.) By 1900, Cody, Lovell, and Worland were competing with grand parades, rodeos, and fireworks shows.

In 1907 Cowley held a multi hour American history reenactment and Frannie held horse races down main street. By the 1920’s, more than twenty 4th of July parades were held across the Basin each year.

Today, the Big Horn Basin stands as the patriotic hub of the state. The Cody Stampede, Extreme Bulls competition, multiple parades, fireworks, concerts, and community events now draw visitors from around the world. What began as a frontier celebration has become one of Wyoming’s signature traditions.

But perhaps the best glimpse into why we love the Fourth of July comes from an old newspaper published more than a century ago.

In June 1916, the Cody Enterprise breathlessly promoted what it called the “Bighorn Basin Raid,” a two-day Fourth of July celebration.. The language sounds like something Buffalo Bill himself might have written.

“Say, feller, can you ride?” the article began.

“If you can, old top, or even if you have a faint glimmer of an idea you can stick on the top of the hurricane deck of a wild and woolly western nag...”

The article invited visitors from across the region to saddle their horses and head for “the Buffalo Bill town in the Rockies.”

The festivities began with what organizers called the “Big Boom of the cannon squad at sunrise.”

A parade followed, led by “the oldest old timer in the whole Basin.”

Then came the events.

There were foot races, relay races, mounted contests, and a potato race. There were horse races and tournament riding. There were wild horses described as “ring-tailed humdingers with red eyes, tangled manes and sagebrush in their tails that roam the mountains wild and free.”

The newspaper proudly boasted that some of the broncs “haven’t had a rope on since they were branded five or six years ago.”

It was equal parts rodeo, county fair, Wild West show, and community reunion.

Even the parade reflected the town’s sense of humor.

The article promised the appearance of “Calithumpians all dressed fit to kill.”

Calithumpians were costumed pranksters and comic performers who marched in outrageous outfits, poking fun at local events and personalities. The newspaper noted that prize money would be awarded to the best of the bunch.

In 1916, Cody wasn’t simply celebrating Independence Day; it was celebrating Wyoming’s place in the great American experiment and how it had finally made the big leagues.

This year, as we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, let’s also celebrate how far we’ve come in the Big Horn Basin and how the 4th of July is the truly great American holiday.